Evolution
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Also what about the point at which mathematical odds become impossible? The point at which the odds are so low that it is the same as if it can not happen that some claim humans’ evolution exceeds?

Mathematical odds that are not zero are not impossible.

Also, who calculated the probability of evolution?
The probability of them knowing all the factors that play into that calculation are probably lower than the result they claim to have reached (see what I did there?).

Mathematical odds that are not zero are not mathematically impossible but what about practically? Something may work in numbers but does that mean that they will work in our universe?

What about you show me that the probability is actually that low?
No one has all the variables needed to calculate the probability of evolution occurring, so people who say that they did and say that it is too low to ever occur are telling you quite a bunch of lies.

And what do you mean by saying it is practically impossible? It adds no new aspect. Something that isn’t impossible is not impossible. It’s a really simple concept.

“How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.”

He was right you know. We use this principle in a modern type of neural interfaces called optogenetics. With that, we use gene therapy (controlled evolution you might well argue) to make neurons that are not ordinarilly sensitive to light, sensitive to it.

In fact, the gene therapy altered neurons fire off signals in response to a light source in the same way those in the retina respond to it. Proving if you will, that the capability is intrinsic to their form, and merely needs to be activated with the right coding.

As such the accidental stumbling upon an adaptation of any functional neural cells to light stimulus is not even as far fetched as it would seem on the surface. The basic properties are intrinsic to the structure of the neuron itself.

The vastness of our universe is exactly why we can make the assumption that we have been visited.

Why? All it means is that there are going to be more extraterrestrial species in the universe, and since it is so big, they are likely to either not be able to find us, not be able to reach us, or just not care. This has been gone over already, if the nearest planet with intelligent life is 100 light-years away (which is very optimistic, all things considered) it would be near impossible to reach them, and by then who knows what would have happened.

Mankind tends to think we are the most intelligent species in existence and I would suggest we are barely out of diapers when it comes to knowing all there is to know.

This isn’t Men in Black, if anything it would be more like H.P. Lovecraft.

This I agree, but when it is repeated over and over in different areas, you must pay attention and study it more. You must give it credence in this case.

The idea of convergent evolution isn’t just limited to separate species evolving similar traits. Many ancient cultures have created gods of thunder, of sun, of life, and of death, largely because all of the cultures experience them. When an idea is good enough, it’s bound to be thought of for the first time many times over, genius isn’t limited to these least few centuries.

At one time scientists theorized man didn’t exist when dinosaurs did, until the found human tracks walking the same path as a dinosaur. they had to change their assumptions/theories to match this new information.

At one time scientists theorized man didn’t exist when dinosaurs did, until the found human tracks walking the same path as a dinosaur. they had to change their assumptions/theories to match this new information.

This never happened, what are you talking about?

I’m willing to lay money on it being another case of some con job with fake researchers working on it, that Jhco’s never bothered to look into deeply enough to realise the forgery.

Just like that European pyramid debacle.

(EDIT on the dinosaur thing. Found the ‘research’. It was carried out by the "Institute for Creationist Research, using the bible as a primary ‘research’ tool.

Why am I not surprised he believes this shit?)

This isn’t Men in Black, if anything it would be more like H.P. Lovecraft.

Heh. I take it I’m not alone in having those dreams of first contact with a friendly, cooperative and inquisitive mass of several hundred warm and very prehensile tentacles?

That answers it, really. First contact has been made. They landed in Japan, and were extremely lovecraftian in appearance. The reason the rest of the world doesn’t know, is because the Japanese were able to talk these creatures into very lucrative and pleasurable full time work contracts under bi-planetary NDA so no competition crops up elsewhere on our planet. In return, Japan’s sex industry takes their otherwise-unemployable.

Which of course means that the reason they have so many tentacle-porn animes with such lifelike movement is because they are employing motion capture on their extra-terrestial employees, and greatly pleasuring their terrestial partners in every retake.

Just arriving at this discussion, I believe that vikaTae answered mostly correctly on the first page. The one thing I disagree about is if humans will continue to evolve. At this point in our technology level, we are able to invent the adaptations needed to cope with a new environment faster than we evolve them. What I mean to say is similar to the following: if we find a new disease, we won’t evolve a resistance to it. Sure, there are some people whose genome is naturally resistant to the disease, but for the most part, biologists will create a vaccine to immunize the population before it becomes a major threat to the species, the driving force of evolution. If we find a planet with a nitrogen-carbonate atmosphere, we will not evolve to breath the new air, but we will invent a way to bring breathable air to the new planet. We have advanced to the point that technology adapts to our environment so that we don’t have to. In this time, humans will not evolve further.

myhome, there are many, many other influencing factors that either can’t be controlled or aren’t considered to be worthy//necessary to address which probably will result in evolvement.
Inductive reasoning isn’t usually all that good when used in this manner.
As jhco so frequently & profusely demonstrates here on the forum.LOL

Not quite right myhome. Children born in this time will still be a mix of their parents’ genes. They won’t be exact genetic clones of one parent or the other. So evolution will still be taking place, and new genetic combinations will be being tried in every generation of every family.

You are right that natural selection will take a back seat as we’re able to fix the more disabling variances, and introduce new capabilities that would never have naturally evolved, but we won’t stop evolution unless we stop changing, rather than take control of change.

Just arriving at this discussion, I believe that vikaTae answered mostly correctly on the first page. The one thing I disagree about is if humans will continue to evolve. At this point in our technology level, we are able to invent the adaptations needed to cope with a new environment faster than we evolve them. What I mean to say is similar to the following: if we find a new disease, we won’t evolve a resistance to it. Sure, there are some people whose genome is naturally resistant to the disease, but for the most part, biologists will create a vaccine to immunize the population before it becomes a major threat to the species, the driving force of evolution. If we find a planet with a nitrogen-carbonate atmosphere, we will not evolve to breath the new air, but we will invent a way to bring breathable air to the new planet. We have advanced to the point that technology adapts to our environment so that we don’t have to. In this time, humans will not evolve further.

We still create and experience genetic pressures and there’s always sexual selection. Life never stops evolving as long as there’s reproduction. Your understanding of adaptations is rather naive.

Assumption:
Someday, if everything goes as normal(there is no rapture, no WW3, and we more or less thrive) we will venture into space and populate it.
What if we figure out that there is no magical warp-drive to get to another star in 3 days ?
What if our society’s views on space travel and our place in the universe have changed by that time ?
Maybe we would only send a string of DNA.
It would be cheap (small) and could do anything we want it to do given time(we may be talking about something many, many lightyears away)
Life could develop on a planet of our choosing, and now and then a species may start using a part of the original DNA it was previously not using.
It could be a very cheap way of terra-forming.
/assumption

Now, considering we think we’re on the first populated planet of the universe,
yet not having any concrete evidence that if we weren’t, the ones before us would show themselves to us nor how,
Now, as i understand, we do not actually have any DNA older then several millions of years,
so i wonder, is there any evidence that my assumption is about the first space-faring species yet not us ?

I realize a similar debate went on before, but i had this thought a while ago and just wanted to write it out.

About evolution in general; do people realize that customs, morals, beliefs and maybe some more i forgot are just as much part of evolution as genetics ?
These are things that are also passed on from generation to generation, though altered by our semi-rational selves,
they’re ways of (inter)action that either help us survive, or not, in the latter case we will usually change them, or die with them.
For example the Jews seem to have some of the oldest non-genetic evolutionary traits(or at least, theirs got less mixed up and changed like the rest)
and they actually seem to be (still) doing well by it.(most likely their bonding is the most important one)

So it is of no surprise we don’t have vast resources of ancient DNA. Your hypothesis is then really grasping at straws, since we are highly unlikely to source truly ancient DNA. That does not mean that life must have come from elsewhere, simply that we don’t know.

That said, we do have evidence against your claim if we look at the fossil record. The DNA has not survived, but the fossilised mineral structure has. We can see a clear evolutionary path over hundreds of millions of years, indicating it is highly likely a genetic lineage was present from generation to generation.

This supports a long-term evolution of life on this planet, rather than a recent ‘seeding’ of life from space in the last few million years as in your hypothesis.

My hypothesis was not that the seeding started more recent, but that it happened at the very beginning, and that parts of the DNA at start were meant to become usefull later on.
Evidence from fossils and the evolutionary path could show a faster-then-expected evolution, but it would not necessarily disprove anything if that were absent.
(and i don’t think we’re aware of evolution long enough to say a lot about it’s speed)
Measurement of how long DNA used to be could prove and disprove my hypothesis.

There’s no evidence whatsoever of a guided evolution at work, and a great deal of evidence that the mutations are random. See HolyLasagna’s example of bacteria evolution in the lab for an example. In that, only one strain of the bacteria picked up a beneficial mutation, and when earlier samples of that strain were run through again, most of those did not pick up the same mutation again. Only some of those after a specific point did, suggesting that another random mutation at an earlier point in the strain’s evolution was essential for the later mutation to evolve.

Evidence that mutation truly is random, and not being directed by some sort of DNA overlord. If it were, all the strains would have picked up the same mutation repeatedly.

There is no unifying trend towards greater or lesser size of the helix over time. Different species possess helixes of different ultimate lengths and orders. So mutation is clearly adding new base pairs, as well as subtracting them in the mutations that occur. This would agree with the observation that there is no unilaterial trend towards complexity; rather some organisms become more complex, others become less complex according to something as simple as which survives better in the current environment.

(and i don’t think we’re aware of evolution long enough to say a lot about it’s speed)

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